The Accident That Built the GPCR Field — Bob Lefkowitz

Now,

I'd like to think I had something to do with how they developed, okay? But the other guy I love to talk about, who I never met before he came to my lab, was a guy you may have heard of.

His name is Brian Kobylka.

So, Kobylka was a medical resident at Wash U in St. Louis.

And he wanted to, he was thinking he wanted to be either a cardiologist or an emergency physician.

So he was looking at cardiology programs and he knew of my work.

This was now a decade later in the eighties.

And he said, I was publishing on adrenaline and adrenergic receptors.

And he figured, well, you know, adrenergic receptors, that has to do, that would be of interest to somebody who's going to be in either cardiology or whatever.

So he applied to the cardiology training program at Duke with a specific interest in working in my lab.

So when he came for the interviews, I was out of town.

So he talked to Mark Caron, who was still working closely with me at that time, and was very interested.

Subsequently, he made a second visit to look at Duke again.

Again, I was out of town.

And anyway, he decided to come to Duke anyway and work with me, even though we had never met.

I can't remember, but I'm sure I must have talked to him on the phone or something.

But I never met him before he came to the lab.

So I think all these stories attest to my remarkable recruiting ability and my ability to ask just the kind of probing questions that bring the very best people to my laboratory.

That's hilarious.

I can add two more stories to that.

So I had a podcast episode with Dr. Arun Shukla, who said that he wrote you a letter and you said, you know what, just come on, let's chat.

And Michel Bouvier, who I recorded a podcast episode with him last week, and he said that he called you up and you told him you're lucky because I usually don't pick up the phone when I don't know who's calling.

That's true.

Absolutely.

And, you know, so all this comes back to fate.